La Vie En Rose

La Vie en Rose is a lovely mini resort, offering a small yet delightful hotel on a land with pool, garden, and two working sections: the horse stables and the dog pension. And it is open to guests for day passes, where you can come enjoy a fixed-menu lunch (delicious salads, grilled meats and luscious strawberries just out of the field for example) to be eaten outside by the pool before enjoying the loungers in the sun or a massage or hammam session (prebooking necessary!). The ponies are left to roam around, and roam they will, we had the joyous sound of happy animals galloping across the lawn and playing, staying well away from guests so it felt very safe. It's a beautiful place where the staff offers a really attentive and meticulous service (thank you Coco and team!). The inside of the hotel is really gorgeous and deserves more time but it's Marrakech, the outdoors beckon! Ideal as a weekend day trip, it's about 30 mins from Marrakech and they have transport partners to pick you up and drop you off in town if you don't have a car. A fab little gem to add to your Marrakech experience, getting you out of town a little before you hit back the Medina and the museums.

Lovely hotel, great gardens and pool, 150 MAD for a taxi to Marrakech but this was the end of a long road trip so we weren't planning on going anywhere much. After 10 days of Berber hospitality it was a bit of a culture shock as this place is an outpost of French colonialism, which was a little troubling and reflected in the prices (food was good but twice the price of anywhere else we'd eaten, not that they bothered to tell us that). Wine, however, was pretty good and only 150mad a bottle, but you'd kind of expect the French to get that one right. Service was problematic, the owner didn't seem particularly bothered about the fact we'd booked for 5 and only had 4 beds, that was left to the rather over worked staff to deal with when we realised it hadn't been resolved at bedtime. Unlike the Berber hotels English wasn't really spoken here, so we had to use our school French instead, which wasn't always easy, but hey ho, it is their official language after all. All in all we felt a little out of place here, feeling like we'd stepped into a horsey ex-pats club by mistake. Having said that they were all very nice overall and after they let the foals out to graze by the pool we warmed to it a lot, it really is a beautiful place and they have some lovely horses.